Williams would be the first to resist any comparisons to Robinson, either as an athlete or as a pioneer, but the reality is Williams’ path to the Hall was uphill all the way.

Williams was born in St. Louis in 1928. He and his family moved to Pasadena in 1938. Williams’ older brother, Ellery, was the first to make headlines as a football star at Pasadena High School and Pasadena Junior College, earning a scholarship to Santa Clara. Ellery, an end, had a brief career with the New York Giants in the NFL.

Dick Williams also was a speedy and powerful halfback at Pasadena High. That aspect of his athletic career came to an abrupt end when he suffered a broken leg in a game.

After that, Williams focused on baseball. He excelled at Pasadena High and PCC as a power-hitting outfielder and quickly drew the interest of major league scouts.

That interest peaked when Williams starred in the annual Pomona 20-30 Tournament in 1947. Playing in a tourney that featured a multitude of future big leaguers, including Eddie Mathews, Del Crandall, Bob Skinner, Don Larsen, Tom Morgan and Williams’ PHS teammate, Bobby Lillis, Dick made an impression by hitting a home run estimated at 450 feet. That duplicated a feat accomplished 10 years earlier in the tourney by another Williams – this one from San Diego Hoover High named Ted.

“No doubt about it, Dick was a tremendous athlete,” said Darrell Agler, who grew up with the Williams brothers in Pasadena. “Ellery was very good, but Dick was exceptional. One of those guys who just excelled at whatever he did.

“So, had you asked me back then if I thought Dick would make the Hall of Fame, I would have said I wouldn’t be surprised. But to make it as a manager, well, I think that tells you a lot about Dick. He found a way to stay in baseball and found a way to be the best.”

Williams, faced with offers from several major league and Pacific Coast League teams, opted to sign with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Jackie Robinson’s Dodgers, in 1948. By 1950, he was viewed as the Dodgers’ left fielder of the future and played in an outfield that would have included Duke Snider in center and Carl Furillo in right. But fate once again intervened.

By June 1951, Williams had been promoted to the Dodgers. He had played only 15 games before he slipped fielding a ball on a raw, rainy night at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis. He broke his right collarbone on the play and never was the same player. The injury hindered his throwing and took away his vaunted power. By the time he worked his way back, the Dodgers had traded for Andy Pafko. That reduced Williams to part-time status.

“A lot of people don’t realize just what baseball was like back then,” Irv Noren, also a PHS grad and major leaguer, said. “I know. Like Dick, I was an outfielder in the Dodgers farm system. It was a great place to learn fundamentals, but you could get buried real easy. Shoot, the Dodgers had three Triple-A teams, in Montreal, St. Paul and Hollywood. You really had to be something to rate a look with the big club, and Dick was that. A very talented guy.

“Then Dick got hurt, and the thing was back then, teams didn’t wait around for you to get well. They just pushed you aside and brought in someone else. A lot of guys would have quit, but Dick hung in there and wound up playing over 10 years in the big leagues. He always had that drive, that focus. After playing, he applied it to managing.

“I’d say he did pretty damn good.”

Williams stayed with Brooklyn into 1956 and never played more than 36 games in any season. But all that inactivity had an upside: he had plenty of time to learn the intricacies of baseball. The Dodgers finally traded him to Baltimore in the spring of 1956 and Williams overcame the limitations of a lame shoulder by playing virtually every position and doing whatever it took to stay in the big leagues. He was able to sustain his playing career through 1964, with stints with the Orioles, Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Athletics and Boston Red Sox.

He wound up playing in more than 1,000 major league games. And, while never approaching stardom, he benefited from playing for the likes of Paul Richards at Baltimore and having learned the Branch Rickey system of fundamentals with the Dodgers.

Williams served as a coach with the Red Sox in 1965. In 1966, he was given the opportunity to manage the Red Sox’s top farm club, Toronto, in the International League. In the winter of 1966-67, he was named manager of the Red Sox. At age 38, he was ready.

Taking the reins of a team with low expectations and clear deficiencies in several departments, Williams molded it into a champion and came within one game of upsetting the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.

Williams went on to a highly successful, and always controversial, career as a manager. He won pennants with Boston, Oakland, Montreal and San Diego and two World Series titles with the Athletics.

“I thought Dick was simply head and shoulders above any other major league manager I was around,” said Doug McWilliams, who served as the A’s team photographer in 1971-73. “The photographers’ well at Oakland was right next to the A’s dugout, so I got to see Dick in action up close.

“He was in charge, no doubt about that. He didn’t take any crap from his players, even on those Oakland teams with all those characters. And his strategical moves were brilliant. One time, the A’s were losing a game in the ninth inning and Dick brought up four straight pinch-hitters, and every one of them got a hit. And it wasn’t luck or a case of a guy just throwing darts at a board. He had those pinch-hitters lined up in that exact order going into the inning.

“That’s still the most remarkable bit of managing I’ve ever seen. But he did that consistently. It was amazing how he knew how to use the right player at exactly the right time.”

Williams concluded a 21-year (1967-88) major league managerial career with a 1,571-1,451 won-loss record. It took another 20 years to get the call from Cooperstown, but Dick would be the first to say it was well worth the wait.

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